All About Choosing Piano Schools And Teachers

[peanut_butter]

classymadame:

I brought my DD to a few teachers before settling with the current teacher. All of them said DD played well and talented. I know DD can play very well if pushed, just sad that her current teacher refused to unlock DD's potential.

Do you have a video link of your DD's playing?

Some kids are late boomers. They have tremendous protential but take quite a while to bloom.

[fifiyeo]

phankao:

fifiyeo:

I am happy with our piano and the sales girl from piano gallery so far has been helpful. But this tuner is really too much!

Is it free service?

If not - use another one lah. The one I use - I only SMS or whatsapp him. We just fix the timing via texting. no mistake. haha. S$50 each time he tunes the piano.

Packaged together with the purchase of the piano.

Can you please PM me your tuner's information?

By the way, what to expect during tuning? Do tuners tune by ear or using equipment to get the right pitch? Never seen a piano being tuned before.

[waiyean]

Most tuners nowadays tune using equipment. Some tuners will do some general cleaning up of the internals, and check if anything is not right.

[Luckywondermum]

I like to recommend this teacher Ms Teo, she coach my son and get distinction in his Grade 5 exam within 1 year!

[classymadame]

fifiyeo:

classymadame:

[quote=\"waiyean\"]After reading this long post, I still do not know what the teacher did wrong. Sounds like a very reasonable and patient teacher. Nowhere in the post was it mentioned that the teacher promised 100% distinction. Track record of churning distinction holders does not guarantee it, and is highly dependent on capability of the students and efforts put in.


Just try to relax. I understand the stress that parents go through before a piano exam. Parents always are more anxious than the kid who is taking the exam. Any mistakes made just before the exams feels like the end of the world.

I am just thankful that parents are not allowed to sit in during the exams.

One of the reasons why I am so pissed off is I was misled about DD’s teacher teaching style. Prior to starting the trial, the teacher allowed me to observe two lessons of her students. She was firm, strict, and had no nonsense approach. I was impressed by the professionalism displayed. The teacher also assessed DD first and she said to me with practice, DD can be trained to achieve distinction, but true, she never promised us distinctions. For the first few lessons, she adopted this no nonsense approach with DD. DD ended up crying at the end of the lessons, but I did not mind as I wanted the teacher to push DD more. But then suddenly from 3rd or 4th lesson onward, the teacher suddenly changed her style and became this extremely patient and encouraging teacher. This is when she started ignoring mistakes DD made and praising DD even though she did not deserve it. I was alarmed and the teacher explained to me that she wanted DD to enjoy lessons and not cried at the end of each lesson. I did not agree with this. If I hire a plumber to fix my toilet, I don’t need him to tell me how nice my toiletries are to make me feel good, I want him to fix my toilet. I hired the teacher to impart a skill to DD, not to make her feel good. My duty as a parent is to ensure DD is well equipped with many skills. I don’t really care if she wants them or not now, she can thank me later when she grows up. I asked the teacher to revert to her initial style with my DD, but she refused, saying that it goes against her principle to do that. I am the paying customer here, shouldn’t she listen to me and accommodate my request? Never mind, lesson learnt, I should have changed teacher before registering DD for her grade 3.

Music is a lifelong learning process and to cultivate a love for it is really important to keep on going on the long run. I can understand why the teacher started to be encouraging and took a softer approach towards your DD after she was crying at the end of the lesson.

If the child feels motivated, he/she will practice and push on and it can go a long way. If the teacher is the one who is pushing too hard, then it will kill the interest totally.

My DS's piano teacher is also very encouraging and I think that is what kept DS going at a fast pace since he started his lessons back in Dec. DS will never not practice his piano and will often do extra theory work and learn new pieces ahead of what he is taught. His piano classes are something he looks forward to every week. In fact I think he is dying for those praises from his teacher that makes him practice and practice.[/quote]Fifiyeo, I am envious that your DS is diligent. DD's teacher is encouraging and she liked going to lessons, but this actually made DD lazier. I sat with DD everyday to help her practice and I often had to raise my voice at her just to get her to correct her mistakes. DD is so easily self-satisfied even when she played lousy, because her teacher so easily praised her even if the playing was not good. Lately DD has became more rebellious and would refuse to follow what I asked her to do during practice. It's very tiring because obviously I am more strict towards DD than the teacher. It should be the other way around.

[phankao]

classymadame:

Fifiyeo, I am envious that your DS is diligent. DD's teacher is encouraging and she liked going to lessons, but this actually made DD lazier. I sat with DD everyday to help her practice and I often had to raise my voice at her just to get her to correct her mistakes. DD is so easily self-satisfied even when she played lousy, because her teacher so easily praised her even if the playing was not good. Lately DD has became more rebellious and would refuse to follow what I asked her to do during practice. It's very tiring because obviously I am more strict towards DD than the teacher. It should be the other way around.

I would be cautious about this approach of \"perfection\". The child, as you have observed, can get rebellious. And for girls, they do start into their Tween years earlier than boys. One of my boys - we expected lots of him. but by the time he was 10-11yrs, he got rebellious. He didn't want to practise when I told him to. Ended up only wanting to practise when I was not at home. Thankfully he has pride and does well at every exam he takes as well as at competitions and thankfully he has not seriously said he wanted to quit. Anyway, I told him he cannot quit until he has his diploma (haha - simply bc he's actually rather good at it but not so good in his studies - hopefully it can be something he can fall back on , altho' he says he doesn't ever want to use it as a career).

So I would advise giving the child some personal space. Ask her to practise the way she thinks it actually \"sounds good\". 1st goal \"every note must be correct, fingering correct\". 2nd goal \" notes correct PLUS rhythm correct\". 3rd goal \"dynamics\". 4th goal \"tempo\". ... then \"polish\". I do this even with my 5yo these days so I can have some breather. Some days, I only insist on SLOW but accurate practise and we are done. After 5 days of just SLOW accurate practice (notes/fingering correct, rhythm correct, as well as dynamics observed\" ... generally he can play it fairly well at a faster tempo.

Hope that helps.

[peanut_butter]

engp9337:

anybody is going to take ABRSM this year? has the registration started?

YES!

[peanut_butter]

engp9337:

anybody is going to take ABRSM this year? has the registration started?

Yes!

[fifiyeo]

classymadame:

[quote=\"fifiyeo]

Music is a lifelong learning process and to cultivate a love for it is really important to keep on going on the long run. I can understand why the teacher started to be encouraging and took a softer approach towards your DD after she was crying at the end of the lesson.

If the child feels motivated, he/she will practice and push on and it can go a long way. If the teacher is the one who is pushing too hard, then it will kill the interest totally.

My DS's piano teacher is also very encouraging and I think that is what kept DS going at a fast pace since he started his lessons back in Dec. DS will never not practice his piano and will often do extra theory work and learn new pieces ahead of what he is taught. His piano classes are something he looks forward to every week. In fact I think he is dying for those praises from his teacher that makes him practice and practice.

Fifiyeo, I am envious that your DS is diligent. DD's teacher is encouraging and she liked going to lessons, but this actually made DD lazier. I sat with DD everyday to help her practice and I often had to raise my voice at her just to get her to correct her mistakes. DD is so easily self-satisfied even when she played lousy, because her teacher so easily praised her even if the playing was not good. Lately DD has became more rebellious and would refuse to follow what I asked her to do during practice. It's very tiring because obviously I am more strict towards DD than the teacher. It should be the other way around.[/quote][/quote]

Classymadame, actually I'm also stricter with DS than his teacher. The last thing I want is for him to be afraid or detest his teacher. So he loves going for classes and if the teacher did not pass his songs (so far only 2 pieces) he gets really upset.

[fifiyeo]

phankao:

I would be cautious about this approach of \"perfection\". The child, as you have observed, can get rebellious. And for girls, they do start into their Tween years earlier than boys. One of my boys - we expected lots of him. but by the time he was 10-11yrs, he got rebellious. He didn't want to practise when I told him to. Ended up only wanting to practise when I was not at home. Thankfully he has pride and does well at every exam he takes as well as at competitions and thankfully he has not seriously said he wanted to quit. Anyway, I told him he cannot quit until he has his diploma (haha - simply bc he's actually rather good at it but not so good in his studies - hopefully it can be something he can fall back on , altho' he says he doesn't ever want to use it as a career).

So I would advise giving the child some personal space. Ask her to practise the way she thinks it actually \"sounds good\". 1st goal \"every note must be correct, fingering correct\". 2nd goal \" notes correct PLUS rhythm correct\". 3rd goal \"dynamics\". 4th goal \"tempo\". ... then \"polish\". I do this even with my 5yo these days so I can have some breather. Some days, I only insist on SLOW but accurate practise and we are done. After 5 days of just SLOW accurate practice (notes/fingering correct, rhythm correct, as well as dynamics observed\" ... generally he can play it fairly well at a faster tempo.

Hope that helps.

I agree with these 4 goals. That's what I always tell me DS. After enough practices, it will just polish up nicely but learning to play it the right way slowly is really important. Otherwise will be polishing up a wrongly played piece.

When DS was in K1, he came home one day and said he was going to be a music teacher when he grows up and had a terrible looking drawing of himself on the piano. Then this whole thing died off. 3 years ago he wanted music lessons again but we were busy with no.1 so never happened. Last year it came up again so we agreed. Now he wants be a pianist / music teacher.